Haldo leaned back in his chair and looked at them.

  “So,” he said, “what is your plan in the woods? What do you do when you see danger?”

  Audree and Lief exchanged a glance.

  They started talking anyway. They threw out ideas. What if they stayed near the edge. What if they marked trees. What if they ran if anything felt wrong. What if Bubbles scouted. What if Lief listened to the plants. What if Audree used potions to cover retreat.

  The more they talked, the worse it sounded.

  Haldo listened without interrupting. When they finally ran out of words, he nodded once.

  “That plan is awful,” he said in the same bored tone he used for most things.

  Audree opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. There was no point.

  “To be fair,” Haldo added, sipping tea that had not been there a moment ago, “most plans sound awful to me.”

  He waved them off like dust. “Train. Until Velra says you are ready. If you go into those woods with your current teamwork, you will die in the first ten minutes. Then I will be inconvenienced by your parents asking questions.”

  That was the closest thing to encouragement Audree expected from him.

  So they trained.

  Not in bursts. Not when they felt inspired.

  Consistently.

  Relentlessly.

  Two months.

  Audree already knew the basics. He did not need to learn control. He needed to hold it when it mattered.

  Ina did not waste time trying to turn him into a swordsman. She made it clear early that the sword was a tool, not his identity. It filled the gap for when he had no potions, no clean positioning, and no time to think.

  She corrected his stance anyway, because bad footing got you killed, but her real focus was uglier. Survival habits.

  “Again,” she barked when his grip slipped.

  “Again,” when he hesitated after a clean opening.

  “Again,” when he tried to fight like he had something to prove.

  Audree stopped fighting like that.

  Not because he became calmer as a person. He did not.

  He stopped because he finally understood something Ina refused to say nicely.

  If he let Greed drive, he did not fight smarter. He fought hungrier and wilder. Greed did not care who it hurt.

  So he practiced keeping his head while his body moved.

  He practiced backing off instead of chasing.

  He practiced not escalating.

  Ina watched him, arms crossed, expression unimpressed.

  “Better,” she said sometimes.

  Which, in Ina-language, meant he had not embarrassed himself today.

  Audree could tell she knew something was coming. She asked questions every so often, always casual, always too specific. Audree brushed it off. He said he wanted to be better at something beyond alchemy. He said he was tired of being helpless. He said he wanted to be a great fighter.

  Not lies. Just not the whole truth.

  At first he picked up the sword out of weakness. Over time he found he actually liked it. He would have preferred brewing, but the rhythm of practice had its own satisfaction. It also showed him parts of Ina he rarely saw. Around Lief, she was even a little softer. She had been surprised to see Lief again after their silence, and she had warned Audree not to drag the whole town into whatever this was.

  The knights made training in secret harder.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Audree was still avoiding them.

  Velra’s training was the opposite of Ina’s.

  Ina taught him what to do when something went wrong.

  Velra taught him how to make sure it did not.

  She drilled the same fundamentals Audree already had, then forced him to perform them under pressure until they stopped being something he could do and became something he did without thinking.

  “Again,” Velra said when his breathing faltered.

  “Again,” when he held mana too long and his aura burned unevenly.

  “Again,” when his eyes started to swirl and he did not catch it fast enough.

  The difference now was that Audree usually did catch it.

  He could feel the emotional slope before it turned into a drop.

  He could feel the urge to grab more, to take more, and he could force it down into a controlled channel instead of letting it spill.

  Not perfect.

  But functional.

  Velra called that “dangerously acceptable.”

  Lief changed faster under Velra.

  Not because he worked harder. Audree would have fought anyone who implied that.

  It was because Verdancy fit him like it had been waiting.

  His mana shield became thick in a way Audree’s never was. It looked less forced, more grown. When Lief formed it, it did not resemble a wall. It resembled a living boundary. Layered. Dense. Persistent.

  Velra noticed immediately.

  “You are not shaping mana like a blade the way Audree tries,” she told Lief one day as she circled him while he held a barrier. “You are shaping it like a hedge.”

  Lief blinked, sweaty and focused. “Is that good?”

  “It is you,” Velra replied. “So yes.”

  Lief still learned basic swordwork from Ina, enough to not be helpless if someone closed the distance, but his preference was obvious. He trusted structure. Casting patterns. Positioning. Breathing.

  Velra eventually handed him a staff.

  “Since you actually have a mana pool,” she said, as if that explained everything, “a staff makes casting easier. It helps control output. You can carve runes into it later and store spells, but you need to understand how the spell works first. Also, the cost will be high if it is unrelated to your keyword.”

  The staff already held three simple spell frames, built into the runes along its length.

  A low-cost blood arrow.

  A blood wall, which Lief found less useful the more his plant shaping grew.

  And one emergency detonation that triggered only if there was enough blood present. It was flashy and brutal, and it drained him nearly dry.

  Audree hated how cool it sounded.

  As for the voices of nature, what used to hit Lief like pain became information.

  Signals.

  Warnings.

  Direction.

  The woods stayed loud, but Lief stopped looking haunted when he mentioned them.

  He looked intent.

  For a while, the real problem was simple.

  Audree and Lief were strong separately, but sloppy together.

  Audree moved like he always had. Direct. Practical. Willing to improvise. Sword, potions, Bubbles, and whatever worked.

  Lief moved the way Verdancy wanted. Responsive. Adaptive. Shaping space instead of charging through it. Plants and structured casting.

  At first they collided.

  Audree would step into a space Lief was trying to control.

  Lief would set a barrier where Audree wanted to move.

  Audree would rush, and Lief would hesitate, trying to read the field.

  They argued. Not loud like the first time, but sharp. Short. Frustrated.

  Velra watched them and sighed like she regretted every life choice she had made.

  Then, slowly, they started to click.

  It began with simple habits.

  Audree started calling his movement before he did it.

  Lief started answering with direction instead of hesitation.

  Audree learned to pause when Lief said “wait.”

  Lief learned to push when Audree said “now.”

  They trained together until they could predict each other.

  Not perfectly, but enough.

  Enough to stop tripping over each other’s instincts.

  One afternoon, Velra decided to test them.

  She raised her staff and spilled a thin line of red into the air. The blood twisted and formed into crude shapes that dropped to the ground with wet weight. Not real creatures, but close enough to make the body believe they were.

  “Mock fight,” Velra said. “If you break formation, you lose.”

  Audree drew his wooden sword. Bubbles clung to his shoulder like a cold, determined blob.

  Lief lifted his staff and inhaled.

  The blood things moved.

  Audree did not charge.

  He waited until Lief spoke.

  “Left,” Lief called.

  Audree moved left.

  A vine snapped up and hooked a creature’s legs. Audree struck the opening clean and stepped back before the counter.

  “Behind you,” Audree said, sharper now.

  Lief turned and raised his barrier. It thickened like a hedge growing in a single breath. The creature hit it and slowed. Audree slid in and finished it.

  They kept calling. Short words. Clear movement. No panic.

  By the end, the red constructs lay scattered and dissolving into stains on the dirt.

  Velra stared at them for a moment, then clicked her tongue.

  “Hm,” she said.

  Audree braced for insult.

  Instead she nodded once, small but real.

  “Better,” Velra said. “You might survive ten minutes now.”

  Audree grinned.